A balancing act

For some funny reason, I'll often get this odd urge to act or talk or behave in an opposite way of what is around me. When a large group of people are constantly talking about something, are obsessed with it, support it feverishly, wear it, do it, sing about it, well then I get this strong urge to do anything I can to go against it.

Yes, in grade 3 when it suddenly became cool to swear, I made a very strong resolution never to swear. No matter how much flagrant cursing I would witness seeping from my fellow schoolmates' mouths, I would refuse to utter anything considered vulgar. It's not that I was adamantly against swearing because it was bad -- I was adamantly against it because everyone was doing it.

Somewhere along the trek of elementary school, I developed a strong aversion to jeans. I refused to wear jeans, basing it on the fact that everyone else wore jeans, and I swore I would be different. However, I am sure much of my refusing jeans came from my mother never buying them for me when I was a kid. I never grew fond of them nor was I able to enjoy their comfort or their durability simply because I never owned a pair.

Of course, once I was told that jeans were "the most comfortable pants in the world" and that everyone knows that and that I was crazy for not owning any, I then took up my case of being a proud non-jeans wearer. I would not crumble under the incessant peer pressure and would never buy myself a pair!

In about grade 6, my friend gave me a pair of jeans that she had bought but ended up not fitting quite right. She figured, well, Miranda doesn't own a pair, so she might as well have my dud pair. I accepted them and stuffed them at the bottom of my drawer. I figured I could use them for painting or any other messy job. My friend didn't mind.

It turned out that I didn't wear them painting, but I did wear them on a fall hiking trip. Word got out at school that I had worn jeans and that only one friend and my family had seen me in them! So, as a shocker, I wore jeans to school one day, which was a huge ordeal, and all my schoolmates noticed right away.

I still don't wear jeans, and now it's more out of habit than anything else, and I've come to like my jeanless style. I bought my first pair of jeans a year and a half ago because I was required to wear jeans in our choir show. I wore them for the choir show and then a few times after that just for fun, but I still don't make them part of what I regularly wear.

Anyway, enough about the jeans; this entry was supposed to be about me rebelling against something for no reason. Here is another example:

Last summer, the Fifa World Cup 2006 was hosted in Germany, and it just so happened that I was there at the time. I was very excited that the World Cup would be happening in the same European country that I happened to be working in, and on top of that, soccer is my favourite sport. So, there I was in Deutschland, completely surrounded by the Weltmeisterschaft. The hype was fun at first, but I soon grew a little tired of it because it was everywhere all the time. Just because every single German was naturally wanting Germany to win, I decided to root not-so-secretly for Ukraine and Australia. Unfortunately, these were bad choices, as both of these teams were serious underdogs and were soon cut from the World Cup. Since Germany was slaughtering almost all the teams they came up against, I had no choice but to cheer for the country that I was in.

So yes, I wore a black, yellow, and red lei to the soccer game against Italy (incidentally, the one they lost), and I did quietly cheer for Germany. However, for a few days in June (here's the shocker), I took more interest in the Stanley Cup back in North America than the World Cup that was going on in the neighbouring city! Yes, I was actually reading articles online about the hockey games and cheering with Heather, a proud Albertan, for the Edmonton Oilers. I was never a hockey fan whilst at home, but suddenly, here in Deutschland, I wanted to support something that no one around me was following.

That being said, I don't blow off everything that's popular around me. I guess I just feel that I need to balance things out sometimes. Sometimes the scale is so far tipped one way that I feel that at least somebody needs to be standing on the other side.